Should I go freelance or stay employed?
Efri · 1 min readDepends on whether you already have clients or just a desire to have them.
That's the honest split. Freelancing with two clients already lined up is a transition. Freelancing with nothing but a strong feeling is a gamble, and the thing that kills people isn't the work, it's the six months of no income while they figure out sales.
Because freelancing isn't doing your job independently. It's doing your job plus sales, plus admin, plus chasing invoices, plus having no income some months. The actual work might be 40% of it.
Before you jump:
Get one or two clients while employed. If you can't get one while you have a salary, getting one while panicking is harder.
Know your runway. Six months minimum, and that's tight.
Understand you're selling, not working. If you hate selling, freelancing will be miserable regardless of how good you are.
Stay employed if you want stability, you want to learn from people better than you, or you have no appetite for sales.
Go freelance if you want control over what you work on, you're comfortable with uneven income, and you've already proven someone will pay you directly.
You can also do both for a while. That's the least romantic option and usually the smartest one.